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The blasphemer that men of letters accuse of serving up human hearts for her sea-beast husband, and the sorceress—for she must be a sorceress, because no female could sail a ship so deftly without the use of forbidden magics—whose appearance somehow both beguiles and repulses.
strangely, they have little compunction when it comes to spreading vicious rumors about her body and her sexuality: these things that men obsess over when they hate what they desire and desire what they cannot possess.
For this scribe has read a great many of these accounts and taken away another lesson: that to be a woman is to have your story misremembered. Discarded. Twisted.
Biographers polish away the jagged edges of capable, ruthless queens so they may be remembered as saints, and geographers warn believing men away from such and such a place with scandalous tales of lewd local females who cavort in the sea and ravish foreign interlopers. Women are the forgotten spouses and unnamed daughters. Wet nurses and handmaidens; thieves and harlots. Witches. A titillating anecdote to tell your friends back home or a warning.
She was too relentless, they say. Too ambitious, too violent, utterly inappropriate, and well . . . old! A mother, if you can believe it!
a certain degree of rebelliousness is expected from youth. It is why we have stories of treasure-seeking princesses and warrior women that end with the occasional happiness. But they are expected to end—with the boy, the prince, the sailor, the adventurer. The man that will take her maidenhood, grant her children, make her a wife. The man who defines her. He may continue his epic—he may indeed take new wives and make new children!—but women’s stories are expected to dissolve into a fog of domesticity . . . if they’re told at all.
She became a legend.
The small straight knife that hides in an ankle holster and a truly excellent bladed disc from my second husband, who learned to regret teaching me to throw it.
What a compliment to note my worth as it compares to carting her rich ass around.
People have this idea of mothers, that we are soft and gentle and sweet. As though the moment my daughter was laid on my breast, the phrase I would do anything did not take on a depth I could have never understood before.
I pressed my hands together to stop myself from breaking the pitcher of juice over her head.
Like I said, I don’t think highly of politicians. At least we pirates are honest about our goals.
Then I’d kill everyone.
For I have always had a gambler’s soul, finding prizes tinged with risk utterly irresistible.
a little madness goes a long way in convincing men that you might stab them if they step out of line.
(See? This is why I don’t trust politicians.)
I never knew wealth. I knew comfort;
death having come for me no matter what.
Is there any stare like that belonging to your children, the kind that fills you with love and responsibility at once?
We used to joke that of the three of us, I could kill you up close, Tinbu could kill you from another ship, and Dalila could kill you from a different city three days later.
“Men are your weakness, Amina. Not mine.”
“Companionship has occasional benefits.”
“He sounds like a drunk witch.”
The men who do not lower their gaze as is commanded by our faith, but instead steal second and third glances; the men who hiss the vulgarest of obscenities and when called out, blame their behavior on your clothes, your smile or lack thereof, your pretty eyes, your very existence.
Men find it easier to believe they have been swindled by a witch than outwitted by a woman.
Those of us who make the sea our home carry libraries in our head, a fact I have tried to impress upon many a land-dwelling intellectual. The scholars who travel the world to study could learn just as much if they would speak to the sailors, porters, and caravan hands who ferry them and their books to such faraway lands.
My response seemed to rock the old woman; maybe she didn’t think thieving murderesses who’d slept with half the Indian Ocean made those sorts of decisions.
